Giving Grace Freely

This has been one crazy week. Homecoming was this weekend, and I have never seen a school so prepared and fired up before. My Thursday night, Friday and Saturday were pretty much booked all the way through; something was going on at every moment of the day. It was a lot of fun to be a part of Houghton's 125th Anniversary. I've been taking today off to rest, like usual, but I am worn out. It's going to be hard to "catch up" on sleep if you know what I mean. Anyway, there was a lot of stuff that happened for homecoming and everything that I could blog about today, but I really just wanted to tell you about a lesson I learned this week.

This week, I learned exactly what it means to give grace. I've given grace before, but for some reason it was much harder this time around. This week I was challenged to give grace in a way I've never had to before, and it was a real challenge. But to truly give grace is always hard, isn't it? Or is it? I think the more we become like Christ, the easier we find it for us to gracious. Naturally, it is very hard to give others grace, no doubt, but this process doesn't come easily because we're not Jesus. We need to study, learn, and follow Jesus in order to start to take on His ways and act like Him. I learned this week that in the hardest times...the times where a person or group of people repeatedly disappoint you, the times you find it hardest to forgive, the times where you find yourself surrounded by the lies of another person...these are the times where true grace shines brightest. When I looked up the word 'grace' in the dictionary, I found many varying definitions. One that stuck out to me read: "divine love and protection bestowed freely on people". That's a good definition. But that forced me to look up the word 'divine' which was defined as "of or pertaining to God; extremely good, unusually lovely". Grace is extremely good love, that of God, which is bestowed freely on people. Wow. That's an even better definition. This week I was taught how to do that, I learned how to give grace...not because I had to, but because I wanted to.

I wanted to be a child of God, mimicking His ways. My heart hurt, but I needed to move beyond that, and it required a strength beyond my own. What was interesting when I looked up the definition for grace, there was a second part of the definition that is so obvious, yet disregarded by many, even myself. It read: "grace: an excellence or power granted by God". That is probably the most important part of grace. The fact is that we can't do this act without God's power. It isn't our nature to give grace, mercy, or to forgive. When we do it, we do it because God gives us the strength and the power. Most importantly, we do it because God gives us grace everyday. I think that's what stuck out most to me, the fact that I should give grace freely because I get grace freely. It took a while, but I finally realized that it was something I wanted to do. If it meant being like Christ, adopting His ways, living like Jesus did, then I was all in. It was dumb not to do something just because it was hard. . .it was because it was hard that I knew I needed to do it. The way Jesus lived wasn't easy, which leads me to believe that all the things that I instictively want to shy away from, are probably the things I should be facing head on.

This week I learned how to give grace, and I don't regret it at all, although it's still hard to do on a daily basis, I am learning. I can't forget that I am given grace every day by a God who doesn't have to, but chooses to.